The AI Era Gives Rise to a New Asset Class

Intellectual Property (IP) is the cornerstone of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As AI transforms various industries at an unprecedented pace, IP is becoming

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming various industries at an unprecedented pace. At the heart of AI lies Intellectual Property (IP), making IP the most crucial asset class of the 21st century.

Encompassing training data, scientific achievements, brands, and creative content, IP is a vast and valuable asset class, estimated to be worth up to $61 trillion. However, the rapid advancement of AI is also dismantling the IP system as we know it.

Traditional IP mechanisms are unable to keep up with the speed and scale of generative AI, and centralized intermediaries create opaque, costly, and inefficient processes for trading, licensing, and monetizing IP.

As a result, IP owners are facing difficulties in getting attribution or compensation for the use of their works in AI model training, while AI companies are struggling to negotiate licensing agreements with a vast number of individuals. This is leading to a zero-sum game between AI and IP and creating a chaotic and illiquid creative market.

To address these challenges and build an open and programmable market for IP, Story is proposing a completely new framework for intellectual property. As a peer-to-peer intellectual property network, Story transforms IP into a programmable asset class, enabling permissionless trading, rights confirmation, and monetization of IP assets across AI and the broader network.

At the core of the Story ecosystem lies $IP, the native token of the Story Layer 1 blockchain, which serves multiple key functions within the Story network.

Here's a closer look at the core uses of $IP:

- Staking $IP to secure the network: Validators maintain the security and integrity of the blockchain within Story's Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism by staking $IP.

- Using $IP as gas fees for transactions on Story: All transactions on Story require $IP as gas fees to ensure the network continues to operate.

- Governing the $IP ecosystem: Token holders drive the development of the intellectual property market on the Story chain through governance decisions.

A total of 58.4% of $IP will be allocated for the ecosystem and community, the foundation, and initial incentives, as per the following breakdown:

- 38.4% Ecosystem + Community: The ecosystem + community portion is established to promote ecosystem growth and community development, aiming to support Story's developers, community members, and real users through marketing, events, funding, and other activities.

- 10% Initial Incentives: The initial incentives portion mainly includes early reward programs designed to incentivize the growth of the Story ecosystem.

- 10% Foundation: The foundation portion includes support for foundation staff and the development of Story blockchain-related services. It also encompasses support for the foundational services and education necessary for the long-term prosperity of the ecosystem.

- 21.6% Early Supporters: The early supporters portion includes the equity of early investors and advisors.

- 20% Core Contributors: The core contributors portion includes costs for talent acquisition and compensation support for team members contributing to the development of the Story blockchain.

The initial supply of $IP tokens stands at 1,000,000,000 $IP, with an initial unlock supply of 25%.

The following outlines the unlock schedule for $IP tokens:

- The community will unlock through initial incentives on the first day of the public mainnet launch.

- Early supporters and core contributors will remain locked, with an unlock period of 48 months.

In contrast to previous launches that favored insiders in staking rewards, $IP staking follows the principle of fair launch:

- The foundation and early contributors do not receive early staking rewards, and everyone in the community will receive staking rewards simultaneously.

- During the Singularity Period (the 42 days following our 1/19 genesis block), users can stake or delegate staking; however, no staking rewards will be generated. This period allows everyone the opportunity to decide whether to stake.

- As the Big Bang event concludes the Singularity Period, all users will fairly receive staking rewards simultaneously.

The era of programmable IP is upon us, and $IP is at the heart of this new era. Stay tuned for our latest updates, and feel free to follow our official X account @storyprotocol.